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How Torrance got its beach

When the city of Torrance was incorporated on May 21, 1921, it consisted of a decidedly landlocked 3.82-square-mile parcel containing the downtown area, now known as Old Torrance.

The neighboring city of Redondo Beach already had laid claim to most of the coastline west of Torrance when it incorporated in 1892, long before Torrance’s 1912 founding.

But there remained a small stretch of beach, just under a mile long, that lie in a then-unincorporated area between the southern edge of Redondo Beach and the beginning of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

It was situated at the far western tip of the Meadow Park tract, a 5.91-square-mile chunk of land that included a good part of what makes up the current southern third of Torrance, from the narrow coastal portal to the Torrance Municipal Airport area.

The city successfully annexed the Meadow Park tract on Jan. 18, 1927, the largest one of a series of annexations made between 1926 and 1931 that greatly enlarged and transformed the city.

Old map of Torrance annexations shows the Meadow Park tract, with its ocean access at far left. Credit: Torrance Herald.

But the city’s beach front lie undeveloped for several decades. Residents of the area complained for years to the city about the haphazard parking by beach visitors – there was no parking lot – and the clouds of dust raised by beachgoers when they would slide down the bluff to the sandy shore – the only stairway to the beach came down from the Hollywood Riviera Beach Club, which was built in 1931.

In the early 1950s, residents and the city began to address the issue of the undeveloped beach area, described as a “white elephant” by some. Some civic leaders envisioned a county or state-maintained recreation area, with landscaped bluffs and stairways leading down to a well-maintained beach with lifeguard stations and a snack bar.

In the meantime, the owners of the Don Ja Ron Construction Corp. of Beverly Hills, which was building the nearby Hollywood Riviera Estates housing tract, had other plans for the 90 acres of land. The developer wanted to subdivide the land into 211 lots for the building of a major housing development.

Daily Breeze article, Jan. 19, 1953 . Click to enlarge.

That never came to pass, but the problems at Torrance Beach continued throughout the 1950s, despite the adoption in 1953 of a Los Angeles County Park and Recreation plan to develop the beach. That plan was stymied by the fact that the county owned only 13 of the 24 lots that made up the beach area, and they were not contiguous. By 1963, the county had finally acquired options to the rights to the majority of the lots, but the acquisitions had to wait until there was money in the county budget for the purchases.

Residents’ complaints about dust raised by visitors continued, as did increasing calls to regulate the surfers who had begun to congregate there and to deal with problems involving drinking alcohol on the beach, which had been banned in June 1962.

As early as July 1963, the city of Torrance had begun exploring the possibility of acquiring the beach back from Los Angeles County, but city manager Wade Peebles determined in a report that the city couldn’t afford to do so at that time.

Evenutally the county did make improvements to the area, adding lifeguard stations and, in February 1964, authorizing the building of a parking lot. A snack stand was added later in the decade, and lighting was improved in 1973.

Developers continued to eye the area throughout the 1960s, but city planners nixed a proposed high-rise twin-tower apartment complex planned there, with the courts ruling against the developer in 1972.

Torrance beach’s popularity grew as facilities improvements were made over the years, though worries grew over the condition of the concessions stand and the deterioriation of stairways leading down to the beach from the bluffs.

These concerns led to a major renovation that began in 2002. The joint project between the city and the county took longer than expected when workers renovating the stairs down to the beach from Miramar Park encountered debris underneath the stairway, thought to have been put there following the 1958 fire that destroyed the Hollywood Riviera Beach Club, which once stood on the park’s current site. The debris had to be removed and sorted before work could continue.

The concession stand along the sand at Torrance beach in August 2001, before the makeover that began in 2002. Daily Breeze photo by Robert Casillas.

Also, the damage to the walls of the concession stand turned out to be greater than originally thought.

Beach goers walk on the new access ramps on Torrance Beach as the rededication ceremony goes on in the background for the $3.6 million renovation. Daily Breeze photo by Brad Graverson.

In addition to renovating the stairs and the snack bar building, the project called for construction of new restrooms and ramps and resurfacing the parking lot, and the reconstruction of two sets of stairs leading down to the beach from Paseo de la Playa.

The project finally was completed in October 2003.

The 6th annual sand soccer tournament, part of the International Surf Festival, at Torrance beach in August 2012. Daily Breeze photo by Stephen Carr.